The Colonel might put it any way he liked, she said. There must not be a moment's doubt as to her attitude. Now it was not her attitude that the Colonel was thinking of, but his own. It had been an attitude of dignity, of judicial benevolence, of incorruptible reserve. Any sort of unpleasantness was agony to a man who had the habit of perfection. It was dawning on him that unless he exercised considerable caution he would find himself mixed up in an uncommonly disagreeable affair. He might even be held responsible for it, since the dubiousness of the topic need never have emerged if he had not unveiled it to his wife. So that, when Miss Keating, in her unsteadiness, declared that there must not be a moment's doubt as to her attitude, the Colonel himself was seized with a slight vertigo. He suggested that people (luckily he got no nearer it than that)--people were, after all, entitled to the benefit of any doubt there might be. Then, when the danger was sheer in front of them, he drew back. Miss Keating, he said, had nobody but herself to please. He had no more light to throw on the--er--the situation. Really, he said to himself, they couldn't have hit on a more serviceable word. He considered that he had now led the discussion to its close, on lines of irreproachable symbolism. Nobody had overstepped the verge. Mrs. Tailleur had not once been mentioned. She might have disappeared behind the shelter provided by the merciful, silent decencies. Colonel Hankin had shown his unwillingness to pursue her into the dim and undesirable regions whence she came. Then suddenly Miss Keating cried out her name. She had felt herself abandoned, left there, all alone on the verge, and before any of them knew where they were she was over it. Happily, she was unaware of the violence with which she went. She seemed to herself to move, downward indeed, but with a sure and slow propulsion. She believed herself challenged to the demonstration by the Colonel's attitude. The high distinction of it, that was remotely akin to Mr. Lucy's, somehow obscured and degraded her. She conceived a dislike to this well-behaved and honourable gentleman, and to his visible perfections, the clean, silver whiteness and the pinkness of him. His case was clear to her. He was a man, and he had looked at Kitty Tailleur, and his sympathies, like Mr. Lucy's, had suffered an abominable perversion. His judgment, like Mr. Lucy's, had surrendered to the horrible charm. She said to herself bitterly, that she could not compete with _that_. She trembled as she faced the Colonel. "Very well, then," said she, "as there is no one to help me I must protect myself. I shall not sleep another night under the same roof as Mrs. Tailleur."